Jessica Bockler, PhD
Alef Trust Founding Director
Email: jessica.bockler@aleftrust.org
Biography
Jessica Bockler is an applied theatre practitioner and transpersonal psychologist with extensive experience of expressive arts facilitation, including participatory and educational theatre, as well as experimental movement and voice work. She specializes in embodied approaches to accessing creativity and imagination and she weaves this work into integrative and transpersonal practice for health and wellbeing. Jessica leads an arts-based mental wellbeing service called Creative Alternatives in the North West of the UK, which provides creative interventions to adults experiencing depression, stress and/or anxiety. The programme is one of the longest established social prescribing services in the UK and has won several awards for innovation in public service delivery.
Jessica serves as Programme Leader for the Master’s programme in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology. She teaches across a range of modules in integral psychology, creativity & transformation, research design, and applied transformative psychology, bringing spiritual perspectives to activism and social change. Jessica is the research lead of Alef Trust’s Conscious Community Initiative, which aims to galvanise projects for social change led by members of the Alef Trust community. The report on the first two years of the initiative and its research outcomes can be found here.
Jessica is a graduate member of the British Psychological Society and the special interest sections in Transpersonal Psychology and Consciousness and Experiential Psychology. She is also a member of the Royal Society for Public Health, UK, and she is a fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, one of the UK’s oldest organisations championing social innovation.
Research interests
Jessica’s research interests include holistic and creative approaches to social change, integral psychology & practices, ritual & magical studies, and Jungian and archetypal psychology. She is particularly interested in the intersection of inner work and social change, considering how the cultivation of integrative capacities and skills may benefit human and planetary thriving. Jessica is on the academic advisory board of the Inner Development Goals initiative which aims to promote inner work to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. She is also a member of the UN’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance which promotes consciousness-based practices for the evolution of regenerative agriculture and food production. Jessica is also an active member of the research network and community of the Presencing Institute which works in the field of awareness-based systems change.
Key publications
Bockler, J. (2022). Group Coherence: Its Shadow and Its Generative Potential. Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, 2(2), 173–182. https://doi.org/10.47061/jasc.v2i2.5059
Bockler, J. (2021). Presencing with Soul: Transpersonal Perspectives on Awareness-Based Social Change Practice. Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, 1(1), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.47061/jabsc.v1i1.471
Bockler, J. & Hector, F. (2022). Nurturing the fields of change: An inquiry into the living dynamics of holistic change facilitation. Alef Trust.
Legrand, T., Jervoise, A., Wamsler, C., Dufour, C., Bristow, J., Bockler, J., Cooper, K., Corção, T., Negowetti, N., Oliver, T., Schwartz, A., Søvold, L., Steidle, G., Taggart, S., Wright, J., (2022). Cultivating Inner Capacities for Regenerative Food Systems: Rationale for Action. United Nations Development Programme UNDP.
